Field Days: a day of sweat, sausages and great music

Alex Ward heads to Field Days to check out what East London’s finest festival could offer

I knew upon waking, drenched in sweat with a pounding headache, it was going to be a long day.

I had organized a small gathering at my place for a pre-festival Champagne BBQ and immediately regretted it. Why did I not stay in last night and read a book and watch TV and eat some veggies? Luckily my captain at arms was feeling fresh as a daisy, and so popped out and picked up everything we needed before the rabble descended on us. What followed was much drinking and eating of sausage and bacon baps before we headed down to Field Days to check out what East London’s finest festival could offer.

I had been to Field Days in the past and highly enjoyed myself; it started out relatively small but has gotten bigger each year before finally taking place over both the Saturday and Sunday this year at Victoria Park. It has a great mix of music with something to suit everyone; they seem to generally get some older classic band to close out the nights and fill the day with many different DJs and bands to get everyone dancing and rocking out.

This year was no different, with The Pixies closing out the festival and during the day we had Future Islands, Temples, Drenge,The Horrors, Pond and many more.
I can’t comment on the Saturday, but from reliable sources it sounded like a great day with more well known acts such as Metronomy,Simian Mobile Disco and SBTRKT.

RelatedPosts

It was a scorching day. As soon as we arrived, we found a spot lying on the grass in front of the main stage. Pond were playing and they were actually awesome, so we grabbed some beers and chilled out taking in the festival vibe before Temples came on (also great). Field days, along with all the other day London festivals, doesn’t really feel like a proper festival, it’s more of a Big Day Out type of event where you rock out all day and go home to a real bed. It doesn’t stop people acting like it’s a proper festival though, so we saw many weird and imaginative costumes, plenty of twisted people passed out and generally everyone having a good time. I saw no agro, no police and only minimal nudity (sadly).

Streetfeast were set up to provide the eating so you could get some kick ass food such as Mother Clucker or Breddos Tacos which is a nice change as normally you end up eating crappy hot dogs or soggy chips at these kind of things.

But I wasn’t there to eat; I was there to see Future Islands. All my efforts were focused on seeing this band, and the timing working out so I could watch all the bands I wanted without missing any of them. We checked out Drenge, which are two teenage brothers from the peak district who rocked out massively and had a large crowd; expect great things from these guys. After Drenge. we had a small gap before Future Islands, so grabbed a beer and re-grouped. We got a great spot in the middle of the tent and as soon as they started the crowd went mental, I haven’t seen a front man with that much charisma for a long time, and the band sounded awesome. They blew everyone away and it was obvious that a lot of people were there to see them. I bumped into a couple of people I knew that said they had only gotten tickets on the back of hearing one of their songs.

Once they finished, we rushed back over to the main stage euphoric with the sounds of Future Islands still ringing in our ears to watch The Pixies close out Field Days. They put on a great show and the crowd seemed to be into it, singing along and swaying. They finished with “Where is my Mind?” and I was happy that I had survived and witnessed some great bands.